J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

Emerson interprets these fragments as a series of false starts: ‘a quantitative
and qualitative measure of Mozart’s struggles with the discipline.’ 50 Certainly the style
he was now attempting was much more demanding than that of the contrapuntally
relaxed fugues he could improvise as easily as write. Here was a challenge worth
meeting, and the awkwardness of some of the fragments suggests that he found some
difficulty adapting to its limitations.
Ex.4.7, for instance, contains the whole of the fugal fragment K.Anh.41/375g,
and what an odd piece it is! Presumably intended to be in G major, the subject
emphasises the pitches B and E so strongly that it is only with the very last note that
this intention becomes clear. The part-writing is strangely awkward—often downright
ungrammatical—throughout. One might point to the melodic tritone in the
countersubject (b.5 etc), the very odd partial neighbour note figures in bb.10, 16, and
22, the false relation between bb.19 and 20; and these are only the most obvious
eccentricities. The subject’s and countersubject’s trills come to dominate the texture,
obscuring the pitch of important notes and giving an effect not unlike that of certain
passages in late Beethoven. The texture and tonality begin to settle down with the
repeated notes of bb.23-25, but it is at this point that Mozart abandons the piece. It is
hard to see what else he could have done.
Other fragments are more promising. The best known can be found in the two-
movement violin sonata K.402/385e in A/A minor. The autograph is supposed to have
contained both movements together under the heading ‘Sonata II’, but is now lost.
Such a grouping has no parallel in any of Mozart’s other sonatas, but it is possible if
this is one of the abortive sonatas for Constanze, knowing her fondness for fugue. 51
50 Role of counterpoint, p.167.
51 On the other hand, Robin Langley suggests with some plausibility that Mozart may have originally
conceived the fugue for organ (Classical organ music, preface).
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